Graded Chinese Reader 1500 Words: Selected Abridged Chinese Contemporary Short Stories (W/MP3) (English and Chinese Edition)

This book is a great help for those of us trying to learn on our own. I was actually surprised at the level -- I know around 3000 characters, so I wasn't expecting a challenge, but there are definitely lots of combinations and structures that are interesting, and plenty of new characters in the glosses. I'm mainly using it for listening practice, so that also increases the difficulty.I am halfway through the first story, about a boy who does not make the cut to get into University, and his interactions with family and friends. It's an interesting window on Chinese society. It's fairly straightforward as opposed to literary -- possibly being abridged makes the writing sound watered down, but I don't feel like I have enough experience to judge that.The book has a nice clean feel, both the pinyin and the characters are easy to read, and the recordings seem reasonable to me -- a normal reading pace and an easy to understand accent. There is one picture per story (so 9 pictures in the entire book) which are not terribly useful. The glosses and extra examples are useful and interesting. The glossary at the back is very limited (I'm not really clear on what they mean by 1500 words, but lots of the characters and compounds in teh text are not in the glossary. The "shield" to cover the pinyin is a nice touch, but a little tricky to use.There are no questions or exercises.Some other features that would improve the book, if anyone's listening... :)- timestamps for each page- more pictures, to help those of us who are using it as a "listener" rather than a "reader"- glosses of grammatical structures as well as vocabulary- multiple readers to make the dialogue easier to understand (it's often difficult to guess who's talking)- links to the original versions of the stories would be really interesting- a couple sample pages to look at before you buy!!!I'm actually going to go ahead and get the 500 word reader, hoping for some easy listening.

Excellent book! Looking forward to buying the 2000 word reader.

A super good book!

I am happy! Thanks! :)

Satisfactory

Surprisingly good.

Excelentes lecturas

These stories are so miserable. They’ll give anyone a nightmare. Couldn’t they have nice ending?